There are men of Bruce Wayne’s stature in the world who could not tell
you the precise location of the kitchen in their homes. Bruce had
never isolated himself that way, but his visits to the butler’s pantry were
rare. He viewed the little room off the kitchen as Alfred’s private
space and was always reluctant to disturb him there. Bruce would
naturally buzz the intercom if he needed something urgently, but otherwise
he waited until he ran into Alfred in the cave, or in the study—or, if all
else failed, when Alfred woke him in the morning.

So it was something of an occasion when Bruce knocked on the door to the
pantry—with a surprisingly cheery demeanor at that (“Got a minute,
Alfred?”). So much so that Alfred stood, removing his glasses, and
heard himself offering tea as if Bruce was an unexpected guest who dropped
by for a social visit. Bruce refused the tea but took a cookie from
the little plate on the table. Then he straddled the chair backwards.
Alfred found the whole performance puzzling at first. It was a
challenge, most days, to get Bruce to eat food pushed on him. For him
to casually walk into the room and help himself to a cookie that hadn’t even
been offered…

At that moment Bruce grinned… and Alfred realized with a start what
seemed so strange about the whole scene.

“You haven’t visited me like this for several years, young sir,” Alfred
remarked, in a less formal tone than he generally used with the adult Bruce
Wayne.

“Almost as long as it’s been since you’ve called me ‘young sir,’” Bruce
said casually, his voice, like his grin, an almost unsettling throwback to
an earlier time. Bruce explained briefly about the barbecue:
just one guest, Harvey Dent. Nothing elaborate, a couple steaks,
pitcher of cold drinks, sit outside, that kind of thing.

“One guest only, sir?” Alfred asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, will just be the three of us,” Bruce nodded, smiling. “No fuss
like the Labor Day shindigs. Just a lazy Saturday afternoon, old
friends catching up and all that.”

Alfred started to speak and then stopped, reconsidering how to phrase it.

“Am I to understand, sir, that you have invited Mr. Harvey Dent to come
to the manor and share a meal with you and Miss Selina for no other reason
than you expect you will enjoy his company?”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed, and the magic spell was broken. The boyish
grin, the light demeanor, all the echoes of that earlier time flickered away
at the question. Anyone else, even Superman, would have accepted the
piercing stare as a dismissal, but Alfred raised a determined eyebrow and
waited impassively until he received a verbal reply.

“Yes,” Bruce growled in a deep bat-gravel.

“What a novel idea,” Alfred remarked.

“He was once my friend,” Bruce said defensively, in a curious
contrast to the Bat-bluster of a moment before. “And he’s Selina’s
friend. It’s not that strange an idea, is it? Have him over.
Get the two of them talking again. You must admit, she can probably
use some kind of support. Somebody from that world she can talk to…
someone who won’t try to play on her vulnerabilities like that Nigma.”

“I see, sir. Then this is not, perhaps, as casual and impulsive an
entertainment as you have stated?”

Bruce said nothing for a long minute, during which Alfred noted an
alarming creaking sound coming from the chairback.

“Your fist, sir,” Alfred noted dryly. “That chair represents a fine
piece of 19th Century French country craftsmanship, but I don’t
believe the spindle is meant to be clutched in that way, certainly not by a
man of your size and strength.”

Bruce opened his fist mechanically at the rebuke, then spoke in the
deadliest growl.

“He used her, Alfred. Her goodfriend ‘Eddie’ used
her like a pawn… to get to me. I can’t… Harvey would never do
that to her, even in his Two-Face days. He might flip a coin to decide
whether to shoot at her or not, but… it’s not the same somehow. It
doesn’t cross that line between…”

“Master Bruce?”

Bruce looked up but said nothing.

“Sir, there is obviously more on your mind than the relative merits of
Mr. Dent and Mr. Nigma as friendly companions for Miss Selina.”

Bruce’s lip twitched.

“I don’t really know if it’s the sort of thing… I mean to talk
about…” Bruce stopped, shook his head, and softly chuckled.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said in a tone of such affectionate indulgence, so
different from his usual understated sarcasm, that Bruce was forced to look
up. “You have not visited this room for a casual chat in many, many
years. You obviously have some matter you wish to confide, and I think
you know by now, sir, that you can place the utmost confidence in my
discretion.”

Bruce moistened his lips thoughtfully and tamed the grinning chuckle back
to his accustomed liptwitch.

“It’s not that, Alfred. It’s not a question of trust; it’s just
somewhat… odd… It’s… boy, now I try to say it, it really is… Alfred.
Batman and Catwoman are having an affair.”

Once, after a particularly vicious Hell Month beating, Selina signed
Harvey Dent’s legcast with the words “You really are Fate’s bitch.”
Stumbling into the Harvard Club, rain pouring from his hair, his jacket, and
his blown out umbrella, Harvey had never felt it to be so true.

That cursed cab: Cab #220, he should have known, he really should
have known that was a bad omen. But he got in anyway and promptly got
stuck in the midday, midtown traffic snarl. Deciding it was better to
walk than sit there watching the meter click away, Harvey paid his modest
fare… with a painful recollection of a day not that long ago when he would
have had to flip his coin to decide whether to pay the fare or shoot the
driver, twice, with a .22. He couldn’t have walked more than a block
when the skies darkened. He couldn’t have walked more than two before
they opened in the kind of instant, drenching downpour that only occur in
late summer. Harvey ran, cursing, to the nearest shelter while the
wind and rain intensified. It was only once he stopped under the
awning that he realized where he was: Barristers’ Alley, it was
called, a two-block stretch between the District Court and City Hall that
was crowded with law offices: trial attorneys, patent attorneys, tax
attorneys, corporate attorneys—and the eclectic restaurants and taverns they
favored to meet in. The finest and most exclusive of these was the
Barristers’ Club, under whose awning Harvey had unwittingly taken shelter
from the rain.

Harvey had diligently rebuilt those parts of his life that he could
rebuild: he restocked his wardrobe with suits not divided down the
center, he reactivated his memberships in the Harvard Club and the Racquet
Club, he had reestablished tentative friendships with a few old cohorts like
Bruce Wayne. But there were parts of Harvey Dent’s old life that were
gone for good: Gilda, that dream of a wife and family, his political
ambitions, and, of course, the law. He was disbarred years ago, and he
was a convicted criminal. There was no question of his ever being able
to practice law again. So he avoided this part of town, avoided any
reminder of those parts of his life he could never get back. Hence why
he wasn’t dating.

And now Fate, that faithless witch Fate, must have grown bored. She
must have noticed her old pal Harvey Dent hadn’t been seen for a while, and
she’d gone looking for him: Enter Cab #220 and a rainstorm that
deposits him at the Barristers’ Club just in time to spy Ed Zinc coming
out.

Ed Zinc.

Jesus Christ.

In Harvey’s day, Zinc was a junior associate called Scooter. That
was the kind of awe the man inspired. The rapier wit, the penetrating
insight, the dynamic personality, the brilliant legal mind: Scooter.
Scooter Zinc was coming out of the Barristers’ Club in a
slate-gray Armani.

“…just bought a Lexus,” the walking pustule was saying, “now Karen can
use the Hummer for the kids.”

“Why not,” the toady walking alongside him chimed in. “They offered
you a partnership at Deene, Devin, and Toloich right? Winning streak
like yours, they’d be dumb not to.”

“Well, it is a fact,” Zinc preened himself while the poor doorman waded
into the downpour to get them a taxi. “Winning as a prosecutor bodes
well for your ability to get them off as a defense attorney.”

“And that’s where the money is,” the toady added, like the pasty-faced
kissup that he was, like the pasty-faced kissup that Ed Zinc used to
be. How often had Harvey heard this conversation before, after he
himself or a colleague had a high-profile win and the offers came flooding
in? Power breakfast at the Barristers’ was the usual place to be seen
the next day, taking a bow in the center ring of Gotham legal circles.
And what better way to mark your grand exit than with a fawning little toady
like Scooter Zinc trailing after you, enumerating all your kudos so you
didn’t have to yourself.

“And, of course, once I’m no longer working for the city, we can move out
to Connecticut. So much better for the kids. Did I tell you
Karen is expecting again?”

Harvey tasted blood. Literally. He had bit his tongue.
Scooter Zinc: a partnership at Deene, Devin and Toloich, wife expecting
again, a house in Connecticut. Scooter Zinc was living the life Harvey
Dent was supposed to have. SCOOTER ZINC was???

In his mind’s eye, he envisioned tying Scooter up in a very specific
posture he’d learned from Joker: bind the feet, tie the waist around a
vertical support, then wrap each arm around a long horizontal plank,
crucifixion-style. Only then bind the wrists, taking care to run the
rope behind the neck so the more they try to pull loose, the more they’ll
tighten the knot. Then, suspend the whole thing above a vat of acid—or
fire—or leeches—or razor blades—or molten lava. But since it was a
Joker deathtrap, he’d always opted for the acid. Joker just let them
hang there until they regained consciousness, then lowered them slowly on a
pulley. He didn’t care about any kind of duality in the mechanism or
any instrument of chance determining the victim’s fate. Two-Face cared
very much and spent long hours trying to come up with an appropriate
two-related trigger to drop the victim into the acid…

While enjoying the mental image of Ed Zinc sweating bullets as his legs
neared the smoldering firepit, of his gritting his teeth as he pulled
against the bonds, of his simpering when the cuff of his silk Armani started
to sizzle, Harvey reminded Two-Face sharply that they had not flipped for it
and even Ed Zinc deserved a fifty-fifty chance of…

Uh oh.

There was no more Two-Face. Harvey reminded himself of that
important fact just as sharply as he’d tried to remind Two-Face about the
coin: There was no more Two-Face. There was no firepit,
no imprisoned Edward Zinc, and most importantly, there was no more
Two-Face.

Just a slip. It was just a slip; everybody does that.
Harmless little fantasy: you see a no-talent, good-for-nothing shit,
who, if there was any justice in the world, would be parking cars at the
Hard Rock, enjoying all the success that should have been be yours.
It’s perfectly natural to set them up in that mental shooting gallery and
aim a double-barreled shotgun at their dribbling double chin.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst came as Harvey stood
there with the rain slanting inward, soaking him almost as badly as if he
wasn’t standing under any awning at all, and he realized he was waiting for
Two-Face to laugh at him. That coarse laughter, mocking him for being
such a chump. Of course no laughter came, because Two-Face was gone.

“That’s two,” he told the ghost of his alter ego. He’d been
suckered—twice.

“I don’t think I understand, sir,” Alfred said carefully. “Batman
and Catwoman are having an affair?”

Bruce expected that reaction. He knew how the statement sounded,
but that really was the only way to phrase it.

“Alfred, you’ve seen enough of secret identities to know that—”

“I am aware, sir, of the tendency to ‘compartmentalize’ aspects of your
life, but I fail to see… That is to say, sir, you and Miss Selina have
enjoyed an intimate relationship for a number of years now. I fail to
see—”

“Bruce and Selina have, yes. When it started getting
serious, even before the masks came off it was… it was me, and it was
her. This is different. This is… the first… the old…”

He trailed off, lost in some private thought. Alfred coughed.
And Bruce took a new approach to the story.

“It was the night of the MoMA opening. She needed it. I guess
I did too. Hugo Strange and mind games, talk about marriage and
mortality. It was just a release. Bit of escapism…”

He trailed off again. It was nothing more than a bit of
escapist fun; they both knew it.

What neither was prepared for was the morning after. Bruce had
stirred first, the deepest folds of his subconscious noting, as it always
did, specific physical realities. He was not in bed. It wasn’t
the hard coldness of an alley under his body… nor were his limbs bound or
contorted in a deathtrap. It was just… not a bed… And his
mask was on. That detail jolted him awake, fully in Bat-mode.

It was a second at most until he processed his surroundings—the
penthouse—the living room floor of the penthouse to be precise—Catwoman,
naked apart from the mask, tangled in his cape and curled against him… It
was a second at most, but it was enough, he woke as Batman in that
moment. And there she was: Catwoman. They’d done it.
Batman and Catwoman. They’d done it.

He lay there in the quiet stillness, watching her sleep, the thought
billowing through his mind like an atomic mushroom cloud: what if they
really had done it back then? It could have happened, it almost did
more than once. A vault or a rooftop, or following her like this back
to her lair, a moment’s lapse of control… They danced on that precipice so
often, it could have happened, more easily than he let himself admit back
then… What if they did?

What if they did?

He couldn’t arrest her now—maybe he never could, maybe he was kidding
himself about that—but now, she lay there sleeping, wrapped in his cape,
some cat or other purring in the distance, and all he could think of was the
way she had looked the night before, her head tipped back, flushed, panting…
He closed his eyes and relived the moment… then another, then another.
And when he opened his eyes again, she was awake—and looking at him—and
unless he was much mistaken, she was thinking the exact same thought:
What if we had?

There was no Bruce Wayne. There was no Selina Kyle. They
didn’t exist. There was certainly no Wayne Penthouse. It was
just a catlair.

With his right hand, he gently cradled the side of her face, his thumb
lightly caressing her cheek as it played across the edge of her mask, then
he kissed her cheek. “Good morning,” he graveled just outside the mask
by her ear. Then he dressed silently and left.

They never spoke of it when she returned to the manor, not a word or a
hint, not so much as a glance alluded to it.

It was as if it never happened—until the next night when, almost on a
whim, he passed through the diamond district at the end of his patrol.
It was part of her territory from the old days, but still an important part
of the city to keep an eye on. Then he passed the parkfront condos,
also favorite Catwoman targets, and finally Museum Row. And there she
was, on that raised section of the Metropolitan’s roof. It was an
amateur’s way into the museum. They had a food cart up there and a few
outdoor sculptures: that necessitated two elevators, one for the
people and one for the art. Catwoman was above such an obvious—

“Sir?” Alfred’s voice pulled Bruce reluctantly from the memory, his
cheeks warming with a sudden flush.

“I’m sorry, Alfred, did you say something?” he stammered.

Alfred sighed, clearly frustrated.

“Nothing, sir. I shall make the necessary arrangements for
Saturday’s barbecue. Will there be anything else?”

After such a morning, Harvey felt a strong need to touch some bit of his
old life. He stopped in Bergdorf’s Men’s Annex, shot a wary glance
across the street at the southwest entrance to Robinson Park, and then
proceeded inside the store and bought himself a new tie—and an umbrella, as
he was not about to get caught in a downpour twice in one day. Thus
refreshed, he went to the Harvard Club. After a lengthy ordeal drying
off in the lobby, he settled in the lounge, picked a newspaper off the stack
on the table, and began to read… Harvey did a double take: Catman? the
MoMA opening? But that was—then he checked the newspaper’s date. It
was several days old.

Richard Flay came over, smiling agreeably. And Harvey noted that
Flay was pictured in the news story, along with several other men in
tuxedoes, presumably the museum board. Of course, that’s why he’d kept
the paper laying around all this time.

“Such a splendid evening before that uncouth ruffian made such a shambles
of the party,” Flay said mildly.

Harvey glanced down at the newspaper, a quote set apart from the rest of
the story in a box: Such a splendid evening before that uncouth
ruffian made such a shambles of the party.

“Eh. Yes. Quite,” Harvey answered cautiously. He knew
this was the way with Gotham socialites, but he couldn’t get used to it.
They all knew he had been Two-Face, but it would be rude to allude to that,
like offering extra ice to someone rescued off the Titanic. So they’d
walk right up and say what a pity it was about that uncouth ruffian Catman,
without once considering that, to him, Catman was Tom Blake, who he’d
punched out one night at the Iceberg for calling Selina a flea-bitten
she-cat… and another time for saying if Harvey went to karaoke night he
must’ve sung I Am My Own Best Friend… and who Harvey had taken (under
duress) on a roadtrip to Key West, along with Joker and Riddler, to bring
Sly the bartender back to the Iceberg, until they all got sick of him and
left him at the side of the road somewhere in the Carolinas with a stolen
BMW and a neo-nazi auto mechanic… Blake was a blister and Harvey
didn’t like him. But it was still strange to be on this end of a
conversation about those awful costumed rogues.

Flay prattled on. “Of course, the real pity of the evening was this
fabulous new performance artist who presented such a challenging piece
that’s been completely overlooked…”

Harvey tuned out most of the story. He knew Richard Flay was a big
shot in the arts world and always worked up about something. In fact,
few connoisseurs were as astute as Richard Flay, fine arts professor at
Hudson University, essayist, collector and patron… and a homosexual.
He was seldom wrong about a new artist’s potential, but on those rare
occasions when he overestimated some new figure’s artistic merit, the figure
nearly always belonged to a handsome younger man. And so it was with
“this electrifying new performance artist” Greg Brady.

Harvey started at the name.

Flay, like all the other guests at the gala, had seen the strapping young
man crash the party and angrily denounce his faithless lover. But
Richard Flay alone had recognized the scene as a challenging piece of
performance art, in the truest spirit of the Museum of Modern Art.

“Did you say ‘Greg Brady?’” Harvey asked, weak with shock.

“Greg Brady,” Flay confirmed the name eagerly. “Inspired, isn’t it?
A pop icon of the 1970s, the era of the sexual revolution, but a figure
removed from the threatening gender confusion of the period, insulated in a
sanitized world of the television sitcom. The actress that played his
lover bore a striking resemblance to that Metropolis woman, Talia Head: a
failed CEO, a searing indictment of the woman-lover archetype—somewhat murky
in its symbolism, perhaps, but that’s the only explanation for the
references to arranged marriages, 1911, and Edward V or whatever it was.”

Harvey blinked.

“Greg Brady?” he asked again.

“Greg Brady,” Flay repeated, pronouncing the name with a wistful awe.
“I would have so liked to speak with him afterwards, to discuss that
magnificent allegory: it is the technology of the information age
which exposes this Talia’s infidelity.”

Harvey noticed that his mouth had dropped open, and he realized he must
be staring at Richard Flay with a doltish gape. He cleared his throat
with a determined grunt and straightened his tie.

Richard Flay walked off happily, not unlike Jervis after imparting some
juicy bit of gossip.

Ra’s al Ghul’s mind was full of plans as his plane circled for its final
approach into Gotham. There was the minor question of Gr’oriBr’di, for
the man entrusted with the important outpost in The Detective’s city in this
hour of DEMON’S great triumph must be granted some special mark of
distinction. But Gr’oriBr’di had already received a second apostrophe,
and Ra’s was uncertain what greater honor he dared bestow: a place in
the wedding procession would be far too dangerous. Gr’oriBr’di was a
Gothamite, afterall, to raise him so high at the very moment the Detective
finally took his place at Ra’s side as heir presumptive, it could be
perceived as a Gotham faction rising within the DEMON hierarchy, and
placed so near the throne, it practically invited a coup d’état!

So some other boon was called for, something that recognized
Gr’oriBr’di’s service but kept him safely out of the way. A new
assignment, perhaps; for Gotham, once the conquest was complete, would be
the Detective’s Fife, there could be no question about that.
Gr’oriBr’di would have to be reassigned… Hm, perhaps he could have the honor
of executing those “Rogues” whose deaths were to constitute Ra’s al Ghul’s
wedding gift to The Detective—to Bruce Wayne, that is. Ra’s reminded
himself that the days of “The Detective” and “Ra’s al Ghul” formality were
nearing a close. Once the man had sired an heir of his blood, it would
be woefully uncivilized to continue addressing each other by these formal
titles. Ra’s would address the Detective as “Bruce,” and Bruce Wayne
would be the first man in a thousand years privileged to call the Demon’s
Head “Akhenanpu.”

Harvey had never felt such an urge to flip that coin. He was
burning with curiosity as to what on earth Joker’s henchman “Giggles,”
a.k.a. Oswald’s former bouncer Greg Brady, could be doing with Talia al
Ghul… He had avoided contact with the old Iceberg crowd now that he’d turned
his back on rogue life, just as he had avoided City Hall and Barristers’
Alley, but there was no way to find out more without renewing contact.
He wanted to learn more, he wanted to avoid the Iceberg… He wanted to
know more… and he wanted to avoid the Iceberg…

As much as he told himself he was completely overjoyed with his change in
fortune, the truth was he’d found his new life somewhat… dull—well, not
dull, exactly, not “a let down,” those terms were too harsh. But
this little taste of a rogue mystery made it impossible to deny that he was,
in fact, missing something in his new life. His new life… needed salt.

He wanted to know more… and he wanted to avoid the Iceberg…

It was a fearsome choice. He had cut all ties with his old life.
If he went so far as to venture into the Iceberg and ask around, could he
trust himself not to be sucked in?

He wanted to know more… and he wanted to avoid the Iceberg…

It was a fearsome choice—and Harvey’s fingers itched to take the decision
out of his hands with a coin flip. He wouldn’t have to trust his
judgment; he wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences…

…Good lord, except for the part where he reneged on the magical bargain
with the universe and the healing of his face was reversed. Except the
part where Two-Face returned, all because Harvey Dent was too cowardly to
make a decision.

Harvey felt his heart pulsing and palpitating like a jackhammer—he’d come
that close! He didn’t have a coin in his hand or anything, but he was
literally thinking about flipping a coin having forgotten, just for that one
moment, what the price would be.

Dear god…

Well then, there was nothing for it, he simply had to decide one way or
another. And if he opted not to go, he would go on being curious and
the temptation would go on and on, day after day, until, in a moment of
weakness, he might flip that coin. Whereas if he simply went back to
the Iceberg, then the decision was made and he wouldn’t have to deal with it
again.

It was better than nothing. So Harvey stepped out into the street
and hailed a cab. #193. He smiled. That would do very
nicely.

Talia thought the “grilled stickies” at “Ye Olde College Diner” were,
without question, the most revolting foodstuff she had ever experienced.
It was some kind of bread—sweet, eggy, buttery bread—which might have been
fine on its own, but then it was immersed in this hideous cinnamon-sugary
goo. Then they fried it, or sautéed it or… they did something
to it involving heat and pans that made the whole kitchen thick with a
heavy, greasy, warmish cloud of… of… she couldn’t even describe that smell.
It was as if the mustard gas of World War I was reinvented using cinnamon!
What kind of human beings could devise this kind of an assault on the
senses? It was, without question, the second most disgusting
foodstuff in existence. The most disgusting were the “Stickies
Royale,” where they took the “Famous Original Grilled Stickies” and
slathered them in a whitish icing that tasted like… like… like what she
could only imagine plastic would taste like if melted and mixed into sugar,
corn syrup, and more cinnamon.

Never—NEVER—had her father’s teachings of the vile ruin of Western
Civilization seemed so valid. Stickies Royale, what kind of people
could think up a substance like this?

Oswald couldn’t believe his good fortune when Raven knocked discreetly on
his office door and announced that “Harvey Fullface” had returned to the
Iceberg. Oswald had heard about the miraculous transformation, but
hadn’t seen it in person. He waddled eagerly out of his office and saw
Harvey’s profile as he sat at the bar. It looked the same as always,
so Oswald walked casually to the far side of the room, then turned back to
see Harvey’s other profile—IT MATCHED! Oswald stared, awe-struck at
the change, until Harvey finished whatever he was saying to Sly and winked,
mischievously—spooking Oswald into a startled kwak.

Sly retreated respectfully to the far end of the bar, and Oswald waddled
up to address Harvey at close quarters.

“Didn’t think you were going to admit you were looking,” Harvey teased
when Oswald was close enough to hear.

Harvey hid his disgust, as he always had, at the affected mistreatment of
the English language. Privately, he wondered why on earth he’d come
back to this place. When Joker, Penguin, or Killer Moth were his only
options for company with his evening scotch, he’d considered it a penance.
Now that he had a whole cityfull of non-freaks to commiserate with, he’d
come back to the Iceberg Lounge. God help him, he was actually amused
to see Oswald Cobblepot.

“The Cobblepots were a warrior people, we heal quickly,” Oswald was
saying excitedly. “But nevertheless, it was a frightful experience-kwak,
as Bat-encounters go, and I felt myself lucky to escape without any
fracturing of my beak.”

“Well, as I say, the super-ibuprophen has taken care of the swelling, but
my shoulder still aches a good deal. The experience called for a
certain redefining of the Iceberg services and related fees. Sly!
Show Mr. Dent the new menu, if you please.”

“That was quite different,” Oswald explained with the smooth manner of a
salesman used to explaining subtle differences in the product line.
“If something happens elsewhere in Gotham, like, say, the robbing of the
Second National Bank or the blowing up of the Second Street Bridge, when
your good self actually was here in the bar chatting with Sly, I fully
understand the need to say where you were between the hours of midnight and
2 a.m. if a masked vigilante has you hanging by your heels from a batline.
But the reality, my good fellow, is that when someone says they were at the
Iceberg, Batman is then going to show up, kicking over tables and choking
the proprietor –kwak!– and there must be some sort of compensation for that
inconvenience.”

“You always charged us twice,” Harvey reminded him acidly.

“You are, or were, two men; it is only reasonable that you each pay your
fair share.”

Harvey shook his head, almost admiring the boldface greed.

“But as I say, that was then. The new Iceberg is… curtailing
certain of those activities which—”

“Eh, quite,” Oswald admitted, although he himself would have phrased it
differently. “So I shall be leaving the high-risk endeavors to younger
men, for a time –kwak– but in order to keep the nest well-feathered,
we are rolling out these new programs. Read on, Harvey, I think you’ll
be most impressed.”

“Deluxe ‘Golden Egg’ Package,” Harvey read dutifully, “With the Golden
Egg Package, you get a DVD copy of timecoded security footage that puts you
undeniably inside the Iceberg at the time of the
robbery/kidnapping/hijacking.”

“And an Iceberg employee of at least Gina’s seniority will claim to have
spoken to you,” Oswald added. “There is a twenty percent surcharge for
Raven, however.”

“What about Sly?” Harvey asked, curious.

“If you have to ask, you cannot afford Sly,” Oswald said dryly.

Harvey chuckled and stole a glance at the guileless bartender.
Oswald went on with his sales pitch.

“If you don’t take the Golden Egg, you’re stuck with the economy or
‘Sitting Duck’ package, wherein someone with a serious drinking problem and
dubious mental competence will say they saw you come in with Elvis.”
He paused for effect then added, “We recommend the deluxe package.”

Selina felt quite ridiculously happy. Like any woman days into a
new love affair, she was primping. Like any cat discovering cream, she
was savoring the sweet linger of yesterday’s pleasures and purring in
anticipation of tomorrow’s.

The primping consisted of new eye shadow, her eyes being the focus of
attention when she was masked, and a new hairstyle, just as long, but
curlier. “A froth of curls,” Antonio called it. Selina was still
uncertain if she preferred the new look as Selina Kyle, but there was no
question the fullness of the curls was more striking pouring from under her
cowl.

The cat’s anticipation took a different form. She had quietly
evicted Mr. Freeze from an old cat lair she’d lent him to store his spare
coldsuits, and was busily arranging to have it refurnished in its former,
feline glory. She was also scrutinizing the Lifestyle section of the
Gotham Times as she hadn’t for years. If Batman wanted to play, she
would be happy to oblige, but it was Batman she wanted and Batman she
would have. Not Batman’s body alone, not Bruce in a batsuit, but the
whole man, the complete crimefighter. She wanted that mind of his as
well as the deliciously muscular exterior, and that meant finding some
serious cat targets again. Something clever and playful, nothing obvious
like the museum’s Egyptian wing. Something delectably unexpected.
Something to make him sit up and take notice. Something… Cat-worthy.